1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile apparatus equipped with a pedometer function capable of obtaining an accurate value of the number of steps by extracting only regular vibrations due to user's continuous walking/running from vibrations detected by a sensor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Reduction in size and weight of various mobile apparatuses such as a mobile phone, a game machine, an audio player, etc. has been attained in recent years, so that users have been able to always carry these mobile apparatuses with them On the other hand, a mobile phone is provided with various functions such as a mailing function, a Web browsing function, a game function, a television function, etc. With the advance of functional preparedness in the mobile phone, the mobile phone is necessary for users. However, because the aforementioned functions of the mobile phone were additional functions, it was necessary for the user to carry a plurality of mobile apparatuses at once when the user is not satisfied with these functions or when the user wanted to use a function not provided in the mobile phone. Carrying such a plurality of mobile apparatuses at the same time may be troublesome to the user.
Therefore, a mobile phone equipped with a function of a pedometer which had to be heretofore carried as a single device has been proposed (see JP-A-2006-101215). This mobile phone is equipped with a pedometer in addition to a common mobile phone. This mobile phone measures a value of the number of steps the user walked and stores the measured value in a memory, so that the mobile phone can display a walked distance by multiplying the measured value and a set average step length. Moreover, the mobile phone can give an alarm noise to the user when the measured value of the number of steps coincides with a set target value. In addition, the mobile phone can temporarily interrupt counting of the number of steps so that the mobile phone can perform continuous measurement by reading the value of the number of steps stored in the memory to resume the measurement of the walked distance.
In the mobile apparatus equipped with a pedometer function, the number of steps might be miscounted because of vibration of the mobile apparatus caused by other factors than user's walking/running, that is, speaker's vibration based on the audio playback function, vibration based on the game function used by a user, vibration based on a user's key operation, vibration based on user's movement (getting on a train or bus, changing user's posture, etc.) other than walking/running, etc. Moreover, since the pedometer function of the mobile apparatus must be always activated even when the original function (such as a communication function, etc.) of the mobile apparatus is not used, it is desired that power saving of the mobile apparatus is attained, for example, by reduction in frequency of access to the vibration sensor counting the number of steps when the mobile apparatus is not operated by the user (e.g. the mobile apparatus is in a sleep state).